


walk on glass, walk on fire

by kimaracretak



Series: Do the Dark [1]
Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Moscow, Russian Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:42:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1450657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Russia's favourite son has no name. Russia's favourite daughter has too many names to count.</p><p>{soundtrack @ http://8tracks.com/kimaracretak/walk-on-glass-walk-on-fire}</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Animal

_and you'll never get enough / and you'll bite till you draw blood_

Russia's favoured son has no name.

This is not, perhaps, precisely true, but the ink on his birth certificate dried long ago and since then the whispers have only been _the president's son,_ the newspapers have only said _the younger Maisky._ He is heir presumptive to a country without a throne, twenty-three and tacitly acknowledged as the only one with a voice worth listening to in the Kremlin. His people haven't seen his face in years, but they all know he's there. They know that he waits for his father's terms to run out and for his election, even if they don't know who he is.

Russia's favoured daughter, though – yes, her, the people know.

Alina Starkova, the foreign minister's daughter, has many names. _Svyatoya Alina,_ they used to call her, when she was young and prominent on the charity ball circuit, dropping million-ruble gems into the hands of homeless shelter directors. That one dropped out of fashion when she went to St. Andrews for university. _Perebezhchika Alina_ , it was, then, often accompanied by musings over what was wrong with the girl that she found Russian universities lacking. And now that she's home with dual masters' degrees in political science and Slavic studies aiming to balance a PhD program in Moscow with a job at the Ministry, it's _Tsaritsa Alina._ This, like the last, is no compliment.

And she is all these things – saint and defector and queen all – but she is also a young woman reacquainting herself with her home, and with the nightclubs that have no comparison in St. Andrews. She dances, she drinks, she gets photographed and laughs at the people who scold her for being out partying while the president's son moves the country ever closer to war over Crimea. She is Russia's face to the world, after all, and what better way to assuage people's fears than to let them see her having a good time?

Until the night when she's at her favourite club on Kutuzovskiy Avenue, and she sees _him._ She's had plenty of boys before, and girls too, but this one is different. He is the most beautiful boy she has ever seen, even on Moscow's club circuit. It's not just his face, she muses while examining him over the top of her vodka and orange juice, but the way he carried himself – straight and loose and carelessly confident, ready for the world to bow before him. She licks lips shiny with gloss and thinks: _mine._

This is a thing that Alina Starkova knows: when she decides something is hers, it becomes hers, and she is going to have this boy before he knows what has happened to him.

This is a thing that Alina Starkova does not yet know: she will become this boy's as well, and she will love every second of it.

Tonight, however, is Alina and a nameless boy in her apartment; tonight is want sharp enough to cut; tonight is her teeth sinking into his shoulder when he enters her. Tonight is his fingers under her skirt while they dance on a Moscow rooftop; tonight is what his back looks like arched against her sheets and the feel of his hipbones under her hands. Tonight is the silken feel of his hair between her fingers when she pulls him close; tonight is the stars behind her eyes when she comes hard against his mouth. Tonight is looking into each others' eyes and seeing themselves.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the end of Russia as they know it.


	2. National Anthem

_he said to be cool but i'm already coolest / i said to get real, don't you know who you're dealing with?_

They don't speak much, that first night, and when the summer sun comes through her window in the morning, Alina sees him properly for the first time. He looks remarkably – and incongruously – domestic sprawled naked across her bed, loose-limbed and half out of the covers with the hint of a smile around his mouth. He also looks familiar.

They hadn't been concerned with names last night, not when there were so many more interesting things to learn about each other, but now a quiet thread of doubt starts to worm its way through Alina's mind. She's no stranger to casual sex, or even anonymous sex (no matter how uncomfortable it makes her handlers), but she's not used to having her partners stay the night. And she's not used to this uncomfortable sense of familiarity, how elusive it is and how it pulls at something equally elusive in her heart.

She's propped up on one elbow, studying the contours of his cheekbones, when his eyes open. And then she knows what she couldn't have known last night, when those eyes were nothing but glitter in the dark. She had slept with – _hooked up with,_ the annoyingly pedantic part of her brain corrected – the president's son. There's no way to stop the mixture of pride and terror that she feels from showing on her face, and _damn_ the boy but he reads her perfectly, he must, because there is no other reason for his dark, delighted laughter as soon as he has a chance to properly focus on her face.

She arches her eyebrows and wrestles her blank diplomatic face back on while she waits for him to stop. When he does, the first words out of his mouth are, “how does it feel knowing that you just slept with the most powerful man in Russia?” and just like that, Alina's terror vanishes, replaced by irritation.

“Dunno,” she swings herself out of bed, heading for the coffeemaker. “How do _you_ feel knowing you just slept with the most powerful woman in the country?” She knows, even without turning around, that he's smirking at her. She's thrown them onto dangerous ground now, and loves every second.

“Oh come on,” he sighs, and when she glances over her shoulder she can see that he's dispensed with the covers entirely. She lets her gaze linger despite her better judgment, because he's just as – no, okay, he's _more_ impressive than he was last night now that she knows he's Dmitri Maisky's son. “I expected something better, given how clever your tongue was last night.”

Alina snorts and turns back to setting the coffeemaker, hits it slightly harder than strictly necessary and wonders if hooking up with the president's son is justification for starting to drink at – she steals a look at the clock – half past eleven in the morning. “Diplomacy before coffee is overrated. Besides, you're one to talk.”

She can hear the rustle of her sheets as he shrugs. “What did you expect? You should have seen the look on your face.”

Alina doesn't say anything, just opens the fridge in search of something resembling breakfast food. So maybe he talks a good game, but he has more than a few things to learn about the value of silence. She digs out a yogurt from behind a bag of possibly-former-lettuce, leans against the counter with her legs parted just a little and watches him in silence. Pointedly doesn't offer him any, marks the exact moment when he becomes too discomfited to stand it any longer.

“You have another one of those in there?” he says lightly, gesturing to the yogurt though his eyes remain fixed on her breasts.

She swirls her tongue around the spoon, gives him a measuring look. “Yeah.”

“Do I get one?”

“No.”

He opens his mouth, shuts it again as a thin line of discontent appears on his forehead. Now it's her turn to laugh. “Not a word you hear often, is it?”

“Not a word that the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world hears often,” he agrees slowly.

Alina shakes her head in mock disappointment, finally looks away from him to pour herself a mug of coffee. “Now you're just being presumptuous. And that's boring.”

“You're just the foreign minister's daughter, Alina. Maybe yours is the face everyone sees, but don't think you have power beyond that.”

She's not surprised he already knew who she was, nor is she surprised that he has already revealed how low an opinion of her he has. Proving him wrong on that second point will be fun. She takes a few fortifying sips of coffee, makes a face and reaches for the bottle of honey. Watches him watch her, watches him grow impatient waiting for a response. But Alina doesn't work in the foreign service for nothing, and she is unshakable until she finishes her drink.

Finally, she puts the mug down, walks back over the bed swaying her hips a bit more than usual. He takes a deep breath, lips parted, waiting. “You're funny, you know?” she traces patterns on the palm of his hand as his eyes grow dark with anger or arousal or both. “You think you matter so much to Russia, but me? I _am_ Russia.”

“I don't...” he trails off, and now, now there is only pride left in her for what she has managed to reduce the would-be prince to. She climbs back on the bed, swinging one leg over to straddle him as she grabs his wrists in one hand.

“It's my face they know, my policies. You? They don't even know your _name._ They like me. They hate what you make Russia do.” _And so do I,_ hangs unspoken in the air between them.

He clenches his teeth as she moves his trapped hands up above his head. “You forget I could have you killed.”

“You forget something too,” Alina whispers, leaning down to capture his lips in a searing kiss. She can still taste herself on his tongue.

He's breathless when she pulls back. “What?”

She tightens her grip on his wrists, mouth inches from his. “I had you first.”

 


	3. Evening on the Ground (Lilith's Song)

_we were born to fuck each other / one way or another_

Genya is a surprise.

It is this, more than anything, that settles in Alina's chest as a small cold reminder that she is once again new to her homeland, that time didn't stand still while she was away at university.

Genya is an anomaly, a five-foot-five twenty-six year old redhead who looks like she stepped perfectly formed from someone's idealized portrait of a Cold War femme fatale. Genya is sharp suits and sharper bones in a department of old men whose suits were last tailored _during_ the Cold War.

Genya is her ally.

But before Genya, there are the hazy, uncertain days spent waiting – for war, for Maisky's son to acknowledge her, for her final tally of friends and enemies to balance before she's too deep in the Ministry to court them openly. The Foreign Ministry isn't technically housed in the Kremlin, but Alina finds every excuse to take her work there: lobbying, usually, or publicity for the foreign press, or access to the archives that she shouldn't really have but charms out of the guards with a smile and a flash of her Ministry badge anyway.

If she's honest with herself – and she is, mostly, now – she's looking for the president's son. He owes her, even if she can't yet put a name to that debt; somewhere deep inside she feels the memory of him straining to break free of her skin and yearns for the knowledge that he feels the same (he must, he _must_ ).

For all of her plans, though, she's the one who ends up coming back to her office to find him lounging in her chair, feet up on the desk like he owns the place. Which may actually be a good thing, she thinks as she locks the door behind her (no point in making it easier for curious ears to find them, and there was no way he was stupid enough to try anything in a building swarming with her people), as she's not actually sure she knows where is office is. _If he even has one,_ the part of her brain who still thinks this is all a very bad idea remarks sourly, _how are you sure he doesn't just wander the halls doing whatever he pleases?_

That part of her brain quiets down, though, as she stands in the doorway, hands on hips, and surveys him just long enough to ascertain that, yeah, his suit looks just as good on him as the denim-and-leather did at the club. He smirks up at her, letting her know just who he thinks is in control. Alina sighs, crosses the room in four quick strides, and takes great pleasure in how quickly that smirk disappears when she dumps his feet to the floor.

“It takes effort to have that bad of manners, you know,” she says conversationally. “Get out of my chair.”

The smirk is firmly back in place when he answers, “Now, is that any way to speak to your future president?”

Alina rolls her eyes. “ _Future_ being the key word there. No one's elected you to anything yet, Maisky, and you're in my office in my Ministry. Out of my chair.”

He laughs, gets up and gives her a mocking bow. “All yours, _tsaritsa Alina._ ”

She stiffens at the nickname, knows it's not worth asking how he found out how much it bothers her. “Did you come here just steal my chair for a bit, or do you actually want something? Because some of us actually have things to do, wars to avoid, things like that. _Real_ work, not that I'd expect you to know what that was.”

“Was that really necessary?” His voice is cold, and for a brief second Alina re-thinks the merits of locking the door. She wonders if anyone has bugged the office since the last time she swept the place. She drums her fingers on the desk, knows that the wooden barrier wouldn't be of any use if he really got angry.

She holds her ground, though. “Someone has to keep the country running,” she reminds him. “And the Russian people would prefer their country run towards the future, not towards war over some land we gave away half a century ago.”

His smile has a cruel edge, though she would swear there's a gleam of admiration in his eye when he responds, “The _tsaritsa_ thinks she serves at the pleasure of the people now? I don't remember anyone electing you, either.”

Alina resists the urge to tug at the end of her braid. Nervous tics have no places in the lives of Ministry officials, even – _especially –_ ones in the middle of potentially lethal fights with the president's son. “I have a vested interest in not getting enough of them killed that they decide to come after me. That's something you might want to consider before throwing their lives away like so many pawns on a chessboard.”

He laughs, though there is little comfort in the sound. “Alina, please. You think I would throw any of them away? I promise you I have a purpose.” She raises her eyebrows in disbelief, but before she can get a word in, he continues. “I mean it. Don't _ever_ think I'm ordinary, Alina. I'm closer to – how should I put it in terms you could understand? – a Garry Kasparov of politics than any ordinary player.”

Now it's her turn to laugh, genuine mirth that surprises him so much he takes a step back. “Oh, Maisky. You need to show some respect for human rights before you get the Kasparov comparisons. And your skill at making me come, no matter how well-honed it might be, does not get you far enough, however much I may claim to be all of Russia for the purposes of the world.”

And maybe it's bad form to laugh at your own jokes, but really, he set that one up to beautifully to resist. But it distracts her long enough that she's surprised to find him back on her side of the desk, surprised when he moves in close enough to trap her between the wood and his body. Not surprised enough that she doesn't immediately turn around to face him, though, and definitely not surprised enough to ignore that between their verbal sparring and the heat of him against her she is really, really wet. When he reaches out to trace the lines of her collarbones with one finger she shivers, remembering all the things that was a prelude to in her bed – all the things it _can't_ be a prelude to in her office. His eyes are dark when he whispers, “You mock yourself as much as me, Starkova. We're more alike than you want to think.”

She bites her lip, resists the urge to move any closer to him as his fingers move downward, brushing against taut nipples and erasing any air of professionalism that he might have hoped to add by using her last name. “I don't have a problem thinking we're alike, Maisky. You have a problem admitting that I'm better than you.”

“Starkova –” His hands reach her hips, and she's wondering how much further she wants to push this … whatever it is, when a knock on her door reminds them both that they shouldn't even have started it.

They stay frozen for a moment, Alina braced against the desk and his hands at her hips, closer than close until Alina pushes forwards and he stumbles backward into her chair. “Watch it, Maisky, you're dangerously close to ending up in my chair again,” she tosses over her shoulder as she goes to unlock the door. And the levity is forced, and the throbbing between her legs isn't going away anytime soon, but it's close enough, she thinks.

And were it anyone but Genya outside, she would have been right.


	4. Laura Palmer

 

_if you had your gun would you shoot it at the sky, why? / to see where your bullet would fall, would you come down at all?_

When Alina first came to the Ministry, Genya was the first woman, and the first FSB officer, that she'd met. She'd thought, at first, that there had to be something else going on – surely nobody who really worked for the Bureau would go to such lengths to advertise it?

But it wasn't long before she realized the benefits that come with that: the automatic shows of respect, the way Genya clears a room with just a glance, the coterie of youngsters who follow her around with pens and coffee and folders and who knows what else, just waiting for a signal from their queen.

It will be days before Alina notices the lines at the corners of Genya's mouth and eyes and the trembling in her spine as she holds herself tall and tight and strong, weeks before she gets close enough to see the blood that pricks Genya's scalp where her hairpins claw her body, months before they are sure enough of each others' allegiances that Genya confesses how much effort goes into her performance every day. It takes time for Genya to accept her, longer for them to trust each other, but they are allies, in the end.

Until today, because Genya is standing in her doorway and the president's son is standing behind her desk; because there is something almost like betrayal shining in Genya's eyes and something almost like cruelty hovering at the edges of Maisky's mouth. Alina stands between them, balanced on the tips of her toes, waiting for the trap to close. And then she realizes that Genya's luminous eyes hold not betrayal, but _hunger._

“Safina,” Alina says. Her turn to try to recover lost professionalism by way of surnames, her turn to fail. Genya's looking back and forth between her and Maisky, for once making no attempt to hide the smile tugging at her lips. “Our meeting isn't for another three hours.”

“I know,” Genya says. “I was looking for Maisky. The Ukrainian ambassador wants to see him.”

Maisky steps out from behind the desk, hovers just close enough behind Alina that she _knows_ he has to look horribly possessive to anyone watching – including Genya. “I thought I had a secretary for those sorts of things?”

“No,” Genya says shortly, and the atmosphere in the room, Alina realizes just a moment too late, has shifted. Genya has brought the real world crashing into their games, and no matter how thankful Alina is for the immediate respite, she knows that this interruption can't mean anything good. Because now Genya knows for sure what all Alina's elliptical talk of Maisky has been hiding the past month, now Genya knows for sure that she can play as well. And now Ukraine hangs heavy over all three of them, games of power and games of lust subsumed into war games with one word.

Maisky searches Genya's face, finds, predictably, nothing. “Valentina is . . .?”

“Clearing your schedule for the rest of the day. Go.”

Alina doesn't ask if she's needed as well, doesn't ask why Genya isn't going with him, just scores a line across his palm with one razor-sharp nail as he passes her. “Try not to spend all my goodwill at once,” she says. It's almost a joke. He ignores her.

Genya strikes as soon as the door clicks shut behind him, before Alina can ask her what she's doing acting as a glorified messenger girl. “I don't know what you think you're doing, Alina, but you need to stop.”

Alina blinks, weighs and dismisses the benefits of faking ignorance. “We have the same goals, Genya. I just need him to follow my agenda.”

“Oh, Alina,” Genya softens, just a little. “Maisky's only goal right now is his election. Anything he does for or to Russia is going to be secondary to that. You can't trust him.”

And that draws a laugh from Alina, short and harsh as she drops back into her chair and Genya perches on her desk, but it's still a laugh and it clears the air between them, somewhat. “Genya, darling, don't worry. That's one thing I will never, ever do.”

Genya reaches out to brush an escaped lock of hair behind Alina's ear, and the younger woman is suddenly, consumingly grateful that she and Genya, at least, have moved past the games. They're silent then, and Alina dares to hope for the briefest of moments that they can be done here, that Genya will get up and leave and take the Ukrainian problem with her, that she can be left alone to process the last two hours with the care that they deserve. And then Genya speaks again. “Look, Alina, I know you fucked him.” Alina stares, refuses to blush. Genya continues, “I know you like sparring with him, too, and I know it's a power trip. But you've crossed him on Ukraine, what, three times now?”

Alina raises her chin in defiance. “Four. That's what we were talking about before you came in.”

Genya bites her lip. “The junior agents talk, you know. They think because we're all FSB we'll keep each other's secrets.”

“And do you?” Alina asks. She knows this apparent change in subject can't end well, and valiantly tries to ignore the knots her stomach is tying itself into.

Genya's lips curl, and Alina realizes with a start how explicitly cruel her friend's beauty can be. “Well. That depends on whose secrets they are, and who they're about. It just so happens I don't like the boy who was talking about this most recently.”

“And?” Her voice is much more strangled than she would like it to be. _Get it over with, get it over with, get it over with._

“There's opponents Maisky likes, ones who keep him on his toes and who he can use in the media when he needs a boost in public opinion. And then there's you.”

Alina goes rigid, her whole body frozen colder than her ears were when the wind tore her cap off during a Siberian February. “Do you think he'll. . .” her finger shakes when she mimes a blade across her throat.

Genya's eyes are sorrowful when she shakes her head _no_. “The last thing he wants is a martyr.” They both know all the other options left to Maisky are so, so much worse for Alina. She leans forward, tilts Alina's chin up and presses a soft kiss to her lips. “I'll buy you time. But remember how little our country has.”

And then she's gone, with not even her perfume or the echo of her heels on the floor to mark her passing.

Alina sits there for a long time after Genya leaves, one hand on her lips and the other tracing words onto the surface of her desk as she runs through potential futures, one at a time. _Ya lyublyu. Ya khochu. Ya nenavizhu. I love. I want. I hate._

She picks up her phone.

Tells her secretary to get her on a plane to Kiev, silently.


	5. Blinding

_no kiss, no gentle word could wake me from this slumber / till i realised that it was you who held me under_

Alina wakes long before the sun the next day, and knows she looks like a wreck even before she gets close to a mirror. Yesterday's mascara and eyeliner trace smoky rings around her eyes – hollow behind hardened contact lenses – that smudge down over her cheeks, stopping just before her bloodless, chalky lips. Her hair – she winces – could probably hide the entire population of a small country.

Well. No matter. She has a 7.35 flight to Kiev out of Domodedovo, and 'exhausted punk' will serve well enough as a disguise. A bit of red lipstick, some minor adjustments to the smudged eyeliner, and a little gel to make the chaotic entanglements of her hair purposeful rather than uncontrollable. She digs out ripped jeans and platform combat boots that she hasn't worn in years, makes faces at how explicitly anti-presidential most of the punk bands whose t-shirts has are, finally settles on a Korol' I Shut tanktop from their Prodavets Koshmarov album that, while offering little defence against late-summer weather, is less likely to get her stopped in the street. Alina shrugs on her leather jacket and grabs her sunglasses, shoves keys, phone, iPod, one of her fake passports, some lipsticks, cash, a hairbrush, and a change of clothes into an unremarkable black messenger bag, and leaves.

Funny, really, how little you can boil your life down to. Funny how a new hairstyle and some makeup can make the foreign minister's daughter unrecognizable in the streets.

Alina spends the flight pressed against the window, willing herself to stop shaking. She feigns sleep when the flight attendant walks past, and it isn't until the third time she does that the irony of purposefully faking a state she's so clearly been stuck in for a month really cuts her, sharper than Maisky's knives could ever be. She had gotten cocky, she sees that now, had too much fun sparring with him in the papers and remembering how it felt to fuck him in her bed. And she had thought she could win, could stop a war with nothing but her lips and tongue and now maybe imagined power over one boy. If Genya hadn't warned her, if she had managed to consolidate the Ministry behind her, if she had made her move and lost – she shivers, again, and it has nothing to do with the cold seeping through the plane's walls.

She serves her people, unlike Maisky; it is her, not Maisky, that they look to. Well, her father, ostensibly, but he has about as much direct power as the president does. Alina hasn't spent the months since her return from Scotland courting allies for nothing.

Too soon, they're landing at Boryspil International, and she's blinking in the morning sun trying to remember where the airport's bus station is, not wanting to risk the more personal connection that a taxi would necessitate. Not for the first time, she wishes she could have flown in to Zhuliany, but her priority was getting out of Russia as quickly as possible.

She spends the bus ride into Kiev proper scribbling drafts of press releases that she'll need to have her office send out, hissing obscenities at her phone whenever it vibrates with a new email or text from Genya or a news alert. The resulting wide berth her fellow passengers give is a bonus. She couldn't disappear completely even if she wanted to, leaving that big of a gap for Maisky to fill would be too dangerous, but she needs time to be Alina-not-a-Foreign-Minstry-official if Alina-the-Foreign-Ministry-official is going to be able to stop Maisky's war.

She keeps her headphones on and music off, listening for scraps of news, for her name or Maisky's or war. But almost no one is talking about any of that, and those who are aren't saying anything about problems further north than Donetsk. Apart from the increase in armed policemen she sees out the window, the mood is aggressively, pointedly, cheerful. _Come the war, come hell, come attrition, come the reek of bones,_ she thinks, humming the Decemberists song under her breath and trying not to slip into hysterical laughter. _They have no idea what's coming for them._

Alina's phone buzzes again and she flicks the screen on with one hand, still writing her last press release with the other. Another email from Genya, a forward of something Maisky sent the FSB chief about Russian troops in Crimea. She doesn't bother wondering where Genya's getting these, just sends up a quick, silent prayer as she saves the email to her phone that her friend is being careful.

The bus pulls in to Kiev Central, and she just has time to take a picture of her final draft and send it off to her secretary before being swept up in the crowd of disembarking passengers. She heads immediately for the city center in search of a coffee shop, preferably one that can be counted on to have the news on its television. It's early still, early enough that her absence at the office won't have become unusual. As long as she can be first on the news cycle, she should be safe.

It's only when she's ensconced in a hole-in-the-wall cafe behind a large black coffee, the comforting drone of 24TV in the background that she stops to think what feels like the first time in a month. Memories of Maisky's voice in her ear, his hands on her breasts, she shoves unceremoniously to the back of her mind along with the blurry faces of those who will die if she doesn't get this right. War is wrong, she reminds herself sternly, Maisky's war even more wrong. And that makes him wrong, because Russia is in no state to fight a war, no matter the benefits to be had if she wins.

_If._ Alina shakes her head. No “if”s. Russia shouldn't, can't, won't fight, and any benefits would come at an unbearable cost. Suddenly furious with herself, she takes out her notebook again, body thrumming with nervous energy, and flips to the last page. Smiles at the last words she had unconsciously written.

_Unyat' drozh', Alina. Prosypayus', Alina! Stop shaking, Alina. Wake up, Alina!_

Well. She is awake. She is standing in Kiev, standing with Ukrainian independence and Russian civilians who don't want to die.

She can stop shaking later. _  
_


	6. Lust to Love

_it used to be the fun was in the capture and kill / in another place and time i did it all for thrills_

It takes two large coffees, three lipstick re-applications, and four and a half hours for a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman to appear on the television. Alina spends the time anxiously, drumming out the minutes on the cafe table with her pencil until the man behind the counter glares her into silence.

It's worse, then, because she's reduced to actually playing the music on her iPod in an effort to drown out the terrifying silence in and around her, and each song brings with it some painful memory. There's the songs she listened to in school, when she still believed in her country and its goodness with everything that she had; songs she and Genya had listened to together, laughing at the stories of wealthy, mindless American teenagers they told; worst of all the glittery synthpop that was playing the night she first met Maisky on Kutuzovskiy Avenue, back when their relationship was cigarettes and drinks and the comforting anonymity of a one-night stand.

_Skip, skip skip,_ she presses the 'next' button with more force each time. All those songs were for a different girl, a prior self for whom sitting hunched over in a no-name Ukranian coffeehouse waiting to see how far her next move will advance the death throes of Russia's foreign policy was something so far out of her experience that she probably wouldn't be able to understand it enough to laugh at it. Fuck, even her current self can barely understand how it came to this, how she and Maisky went from flirtatious banter to seeing who could tempt the other into political suicide first. _Not,_ the rational part of her brain adds, _like what the two of you have to lose is in any way equivalent._ Maisky could lose popular support for a month, maybe, on the outside, if he handles Ukraine wrongly. Alina could lose her position at the Ministry, respect at the university, even her life if some ambitious-but-not-bright lackey took it into their head to earn treats from Maisky by silencing his political problem.

Alina sighs. It's too late for those sorts of recriminations, has been since she woke up with Maisky in her bed and a smart-ass comment on her lips. But if the rational part of her brain is preoccupied with that, at least it's not busy listing off the ways in which war makes sense. She smiles wryly at herself, turns the smile into a flinty glare as soon as the teenaged boy at the next table over starts looking like he thinks the smile is directed at him. Fortunately for both of them, the moment Alina's look starts edging towards _murderous_ and his look veers towards _lascivious_ is the same moment that a breaking news alert comes up on the television. She grabs the remote off the counter before anyone can stop her and turns up the volume.

“ _The President of Russia is planning on making an announcement today regarding official military aid to be given to separatists fighting Ukrainian government forces in the Crimea. Clashes between Ukrainian troops and armed rebel groups have been spreading northward from Donetsk for the past few days._

_The Ministry of Crimean Affairs has released a preliminary statement supporting whatever action the president chooses to take, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment amidst rumors of a split between the Ministry and the President and uncomfirmed reports that Alina Starkova, the Foreign Minister's daughter and presumptive future deputy minister is in Ukraine trying to bring separatist militias to the negotiating table in what President Maisky's son and favourite to win in next year's elections called 'a naïve hope at best and a denial of Crimean rights to self-definition at worst, if true'. . .”_

The newscaster drones on about statements from Ukrainian officials and attempts by the network to get in touch with Yulia Timoshenko but Alina doesn't hear him. Maisky knows she's in Ukraine. Maisky knows she's in Ukraine trying her hand at personal diplomacy. And if the Ministry was refusing to comment that means that at least three people disobeyed direct orders from her, and her power base might have been shaky but _that_ was unthinkable.

But Maisky knows she's in Ukraine, and knows she's in Ukraine to convince the militias to lay down their arms.

There's only one person Maisky's office could have learned that from, one person who could have given Maisky enough confidence to launch the media fight between them so sharply.

_No._

She grips the table hard, too hard, presses her fingers into the cheap wood and only dimly registers the splinters burying themselves under her nails. Maisky's betrayal hurt on a personal level more than she had expected it to, but it is practically nonexistent compared to this.

_No, no, Genya, no._

She drops two hundred hryven' notes on the table, mutters something she assumes approximates “keep the change” as she stumbles to the street on autopilot, breathing deep and tasting smoke and gas and Kiev on her tongue.

There is no more time for power games, no more time for war games.

She loves Russia too much to give her country anything else.

Everything else is just details – lust for Maisky, love for Genya, the intoxicating miasma of the four that form her relationship to power.

Maisky wants a real war.

Maisky will have a real war.

_Her_ war.


	7. Majesty

_you just watched me walk away / and i just have to ask, do you know your fate?_

Alina gives herself three minutes of blankness on the streets of Kiev. Three minutes sitting cross-legged on the corner, phone vibrating nonstop at her hip and fingers curled tight around the knife in her pocket. Three minutes to breathe, breathe so deeply she feels light-headed from something other than grief. Breathe so deeply she wonders if she could swell up like a balloon, big enough to consume Ukraine and Russia and everyone she knows and all the lies they tell.

After those three minutes have passed she pulls out her phone, ignores everything but her list of text messages and the blank space next to Genya’s name where the number of new messages is stubbornly, cruelly, blank. So she makes the first move -- she has always been good at that, at least -- and sends one word: _why_. It is plea and indictment and demand and disbelief all in one; three letters, and her fingers stumble over the keys anyway because she knows there’s a very real possibility that it is also _goodbye_. The knowledge hangs heavy around her neck as she stands, drops into the hollow where she’s becoming less and less sure that her heart used to reside.

And then Alina takes a step, and then another, and another, because she has been in the ministry long enough to know that she has a scant few days before she takes her place among the ranks of the _byvshiye lyudi_ , and she will not wait on a street corner for Maisky’s bullet to make her a former person. She may spend those last days sweeping the tattered scraps of her dignity around her shoulders in pale imitation of the government-reinforced cloak they once formed, sifting through whichever low level bureaucrats and singed ex-army rebels she can find, but she will spend them on her feet.

Headphones back on and music treading the line between hazy pop and rock with a disdainful ease that she tries her best to mimic, Alina stalks her way over to Khreshchatyk Street, trying to plan her next move. She had left anything that could identify her as a government official in her apartment, counting on the fact that her acquaintances would recognise her and hoping to preserve some sort of anonymity. Like most things that had seemed a good idea when she boarded the plane this morning (how could it have only been this morning?), the lack of ID was now causing more trouble than it was worth. _But maybe it’s still for the best in the end_ , she thinks ruefully, tugging at a knot in her hair and flipping off a motorcyclist who had jumped the sidewalk with her other hand. She doesn’t look a thing like her photo anymore, after months of a purgatory-reminiscent holding pattern on the Ukrainian insurgency and then two days of too much coffee and adrenalin and too little food or sleep. And there were plenty of places where lack of resemblance was cause for much greater concern than lack of ID at all.

She has made it up and down the street twice, flinching every time a police officer looks her way and making no progress in her planning, before she feels a tug at her waistband. Alina spins around, arm outstretched, fully intending to punch whoever it is in the face, but her hand meets empty air. And then she looks down, and sees the kid. Ten, maybe eleven years old, and grubby in a carefully put together way that makes her suspect he’s on the street not so much because he has no place else to be as because he has plans to earn a little extra spending money by conning naive tourists out of cash. “Oh, fuck off,” she says in exasperation, switching her bag to her other shoulder just in case.

He grins back, showing surprisingly white teeth. “Not if you’re Alina Anatolyevna.”

Alina pulls her jacket closer in a vain attempt to disguise her shiver. Surely Maisky wouldn’t set a child to do his dirty work, surely he couldn’t have anything planned so soon. “Who’s asking?” Her voice doesn’t shake, and she counts a small victory.

“Nikolai Vladimirovich. And he’s not asking, he has a message for you.”

 _No_. Since when did the prime minister’s disgraced son run around giving street kids messages for the only-disgraced-two-hours-ago foreign minister’s daughter? Unless Nikolai had somehow guessed what she would do, had bent his famed intellect around his guided missile submarine and come up with his own plot to control Russia and start his own wars -- she’s getting paranoid, she knows, but there’s no other choice.

“Why should I believe that? Tell him to get his ass off the _Severodvinsk_ and tell me in person.”

Now the boy looks worried. “I promised I’d give you the message, okay?”

Alina snorts. “Out of the goodness of his heart, I’m sure.” Nikolai didn’t have much of a heart when they were teenagers fucking each other in not-quite-secret to try and teach their parents a lesson; she has no reason to think he’d grown one in the years since he appropriated a nuclear sub and started trying to peddle intelligence to the highest bidder.

“He said there’d be money in it for me,” the kid says, eyeing her bag, greed mixed with the worry in his eyes now. Probably thinking he wasn’t getting paid enough, Alina thinks, scanning the street for police, uniformed or otherwise.

“Maybe. After you give me the message.”

“Two thousand rubles. _Before_.” Alina sighs. Satisfied that, for the moment, they’re not being watched, she picks the boy up by the shoulders and swings him around in a half circle before dropping him roughly to the ground. He squeaks in fury, clearly unwilling to draw attention to what could otherwise be nothing more than siblings at play.

“You’re funny. What does Nikolai want to tell me.”

He shoves his hands into his pockets. Sighs. “You’re looking for negotiations in all the wrong places. Talk to these three.” He hands her a slip of paper, covered in the jagged Russian cursive that Alina remembers from passing notes during a short-lived internship at Pravda. She grabs it without a word of thanks, ignores the hand he leaves stretched out between them.

Alina skims the note. Three names, just like the boy said. Nothing else, nothing to indicate sender, recipient, or intent. But enough that Alina knows what she needs to do. She digs a thousand-ruble note from her pocket, glad that she hadn’t exchanged all of her currency, and slaps it into the boy’s hand. When he opens his mouth to protest, she gives him the glare that she had previously reserved for old men from the KGB who tested her patience. “Get out of here. I see you again, you regret it.”  
  
He vanishes, and Alina is alone. It’s not, she thinks, an entirely unpleasant state of being anymore.

This is what Alina Starkova knows: She is dead once she steps foot on Russian soil.  
  
This is what Alina Starkova does in Kiev: Pays an unfriendly taxi driver an exorbitant amount of money to take her to the Budinok Verkhovnoy Radi. Promises one militant separatist time on television and one nationalist member of parliament a gunshot to the head. Weighs the revenue to be gained from a Russian Crimea over the international reputation to be paid in a war. Finds one of them wanting.  
  
This is what Alina Starkova refuses to do: Acknowledge that less than twenty-four hours ago, she still would have been proud to say that she served Russia with or for Dmitri Maisky.  
  
This is the text Alina Starkova sends: _I know you’re coming for me. If you bring anyone else I’ll kill you all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> K-329 Severodvinsk is, incidentally, a real submarine currently serving in the Russian Navy, whose construction was begun in 1993 and which began sea trials in 2011. It's the first of 12 planned (and 2 built) Yasen-class submarines, and given the changes to the ships of the class since construction started on the Severodvinsk as well as the 50-person crew complement (24 officer/26 enlisted), it seemed a good ship for a mildly-disreputable prime minister's son to, uhm, 'borrow'.


	8. Eclipse (All Yours)

_i’m all yours, i’m not afraid / and you’re all mine, say what they may_

Maisky makes her wait.

Alina’s furious, at first, wants him there in front of her right now, wants to yell and curse at him like she’s twelve years old again, wants to maybe even kill him. But once she calms down -- pacing a tiny loop around her shitty motel room and studiously ignoring her downstairs neighbour banging on his ceiling -- she realises it’s for the best. She can’t be twelve year old _Svyatoya Alina_ when Maisky comes for her, can’t even be twenty-three year old _Zamestitel' Alina_. She needs to be more, needs to be as cold and sharp as cut glass and as bright as sunlight reflecting off of it.

Maisky comes alone.

Alina almost wishes he hadn’t -- _give me a reason just one just one give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you hurt them take you make you mine_ \-- but that wish vanishes as soon as she sees him lounging in her doorway, looking so much like the boy from the club that he was when she first saw him that she almost forgets why she summoned him. But she’s not yet lost, she reminds herself, and speaks as soon as he’s opened his mouth.

“You must have a weaker position than even I had thought if you need to slaughter your potential allies in the press like this.”

He pushes off from the wall, walks toward her with his arms outstretched, a welcome for an old friend. She steps backwards unhesitatingly, puts the bed between them. “The only thing that makes us weak is wanting,” he says, that infuriatingly sly smile of his tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You want too much, Alina. I’m just helping Russia fulfill her destiny.”

“You ought to be more careful throwing around big words like that, Maisky. Watch they don’t dent your skull on the rebound.” It’s intoxicating, knowing that nothing she says anymore can make her situation worse.

He laughs, the laugh that’s always made Alina wonder if she wants to fuck him or claw his eyes out. “Why? It wasn’t words that got your head in trouble, was it? That was your own failure to make sure you knew who your friends were.”

And she had been ready for anything but this, anything but Maisky throwing Genya’s betrayal in her face so callously. She stares, speechless for a minute, until she finally spits out “ _fuck you_ ”.

Maisky’s grin has more humour in it than she wants to see when he says, “You tried that. How well do you think that worked?”

Alina keeps her face blank, determined not be Maisky’s mirror in at least this one thing. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

His sigh has an almost undetectable trace of pity floating around the edges, and when he shoves his hands in his pockets Alina wonders if he thinks she’s out of her depth. She wonders if she is. “Come home, Alina. We can talk on the flight. There’s a press conference we need to hold together.”

Press conferences. There, if nowhere else, she is on solid ground.

So she says yes, not knowing if she’ll survive the flight. She says yes, not knowing that the next day will find her sitting at her dressing table, three armed guards outside and Genya fixing her hair, eyes daring Alina to say something, anything about what they’re about to do. So she says yes, to Maisky and Genya and her own fate.

“Will you ever do me the courtesy of telling me why? What could Maisky possibly promise the highest ranking female officer in the FSB and my best friend to get her to betray me? Should I be taking notes, is that it?” They're the first words she's spoken since getting off the plane from Kiev. 

Genya’s hands still on her hair, her eyes in the mirror pointedly avoiding Alina’s. Alina knows she should feel some satisfaction from Genya’s guilt, but she that’s one cruelty she can’t bring herself to meet. “There’s plenty of men above the highest ranking female officer in the FSB.”

The cold on the back of her neck has nothing to do with her damp, curling hair anymore. “He promised . . .”

“The entire Bureau, yes,” Genya says shortly, abandoning Alina’s hair and rustling through the jars and tubes and palettes with more force than really necessary. “I swear on my mother, Alina, I would have used that to make sure he never hurt you.” And now she does meet Alina’s eyes, and Alina realises that Genya is telling the truth, even as she dresses her up to die.

“You promise?” Alina asks the question anyway, and for an answer Genya spins her stool around, kneels in front of her, and kisses her. And it’s nothing like the good luck kiss Genya gave her before she left for Kiev, it’s hot and wanting and soft and Alina has opened her mouth for Genya’s tongue almost before she’s finished processing how much she still wants this, after everything. She reaches for the hard edge of the dressing table behind her, holds onto it as if her life depended on it, clings to Genya’s hair with the other and kisses her back like it’s the end of the world. Because it is.

“I’m so sorry,” Genya whispers when she finally breaks the kiss, restless hands skimming up and down Alina’s thighs. “So sorry, Alina, you deserve so much better.”

Alina winds Genya’s hair through her fingers, watches Genya push her skirts up her waist. “I know,” she murmurs, heat pooling low in her belly as Genya’s lips meet her thighs, open-mouthed kisses so tantalizingly close to where she wants, needs them. “I know, I know, so do you--”.

And then she doesn’t speak at all except to say please, please as Genya’s fingers slip under her panties, tug them down her legs to tangle around her ankles; maybe she’s pleading for the things she gets, Genya’s tongue sweeping though her folds and Genya’s fingers inside her; maybe she’s pleading for the chance to start again that none of them will ever get.

She’s crying when she finally comes, comes so hard in Genya’s mouth that she sees stars, all the broken bits of the future they should have had refracting their lost promises back at her a thousandfold. Between her legs, she thinks maybe Genya’s crying too, her tears mingling with Alina’s own wetness. Alina wonders if that’s poetic, or desperately sad, or some awful combination of both.

“Do you always start your wars like this?” she asks when she finally has her breath back.

“ _We_ ,” Genya corrects her roughly, and she’s unreadable, too many emotions swirling through her shining eyes. “We started a war, Alina, all three of us. And I wish you could survive it with us.”

All Alina can do is give a strangled half-sob, half-laugh as she looks down at her friend, her dress still wrinkled around her waist and Genya’s fingers still slick with her come. “Well, between the three of us we’ve made a right mess out of that plan, haven’t we?”

Genya bites her lip. “I wish. . .”

Alina brings Genya’s hand to her mouth, licks her fingers clean. “I know.” She stands up. She straightens her dress. Genya sweeps blood red lipstick across both their mouths. They’ve made their peace, such as it is, and there’s nothing else to say.

Because when Alina stands next to Maisky on the dais two hours later, Genya is on his other side, in full dress uniform. Because when Maisky speaks of the work the FSB is doing to keep the Russian-Ukrainian border safe, he announces Genya’s promotion to full General and Director of the FSB. Because when he puts all of Russia’s political and military resources at Crimea’s disposal, Alina doesn’t contradict him. Alina waits just long enough after the reporters’ questions have finished for her departure to be acceptable, and then she makes her excuses and leaves, heading towards her car and already knowing it won’t be taking her back to Moscow.

The first bomb of the Second Crimean War falls not even two meters from her feet.

Shrapnel hangs in the air like glitter, and she doesn't blink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends the fic that I never expected to be a fic. What do you think, should I continue this for Siege and Storm/Ruin and Rising?


End file.
